Telegraph: Suicidal woman’s plea for help on Facebook

Late on Christmas, Simone Back, a 42-year-old woman in Brighton, England, posted this message on Facebook:

“Took all my pills be dead soon bye bye everyone.”

And the response, according to the The Daily Telegraph, included one person calling her a liar and another saying suicide was Back’s choice.

She had more than 1,000 Facebook friends. None offered help. There were nearly 150 messages discussing what she had written.

Back’s body was found 17 hours after she posted, when police broke down her door.

A friend told the newspaper:

Everyone just carried on arguing with each other on Facebook like it wasn’t happening. Some of those people lived within walking distance of Simone.

If one person just left their computer and went to her house her life could have been saved.

MSNBC.COM notes that Facebook is trying to help people who announce their plans to kill themselves on the social-networking site.

This tragedy occurs just as Facebook and the National Council of Suicide Prevention (NCSP) are working together to continue to refine their suicide prevention protocols and share best practices. A meeting with other major Internet tech companies is planned for the end of January to build a partnership in this effort.